Doha Catches the Avian Flu

by SUSAN K. FINSTON,
The Wall Street Journal

IPN, 21 Nov 2005 - Avian flu may or may not become a pandemic but it's already infected global trade talks.

In the run-up to next month's World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong, most press coverage has focused on the high-profile disagreements over farm subsidies and tariffs on agricultural and industrial goods and services. A less-noticed but important part of the so-called Doha round of trade talks are the rules that govern the WTO.

Here, discord over an amendment to the agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, threatens to boil over politically. Specifically, members have been unable to settle on a provision that would allow the production of medicines under compulsory licensing for export to poor countries lacking manufacturing capacity. Under proposed language, developing countries without domestic pharmaceutical producers would be able to issue compulsory licenses to overseas producers, like India's Cipla, to meet their market needs in the event of a national public health emergency. Under terms agreed in 2003, this amendment was to include protections against spurious or non-humanitarian usage -- restricting compulsory licensing to clear emergencies and preventing poor patients from receiving counterfeit medications -- as well as the diversion of these cheap generic drugs from the African nations for which they are intended to lucrative markets in Europe.

But African states are now demanding that these safeguards be scrapped on the grounds that they create new barriers to medicine access. To strengthen their case, these developing countries and activists who have been trying to tear down intellectual property rights for decades are now playing on public fears about a potential avian flu pandemic.

Deleting the safeguards, however, might very well put African patients at greater risk than ever before. Both diversion of drugs and counterfeiting of HIV/AIDS medicines have been documented in Uganda and elsewhere in the developing world, with disastrous impact. Counterfeit or substandard drugs contribute substantially to the growth of drug-resistant HIV/AIDS strains, while diversion of cheap generic drugs to Europe threatens continuing supplies of essential medicines for the poorest and most vulnerable patients in Africa. This "solution" actually would make it harder for stressed public health institutions in developing countries to get essential medicines to patients.

But in the reality-optional Geneva trade talks, these facts are irrelevant.

Over the next few weeks, many expect to see further concessions to anti-patent activists and developing countries in the form of new carve-outs for intellectual property relating to medicines as a way of resolving the issue before the Hong Kong meeting. This means that developed states may well give in to demands on the TRIPS and public health issue without getting anything in return. This is exactly what happened in Cancun in 2003.

In truth, there is no action item on the medicine access issue that requires resolution before Hong Kong, and some unlikely developing countries like Brazil and Malaysia have pointed this out during recent discussions. But many key WTO members are all too eager to move on medicine access before Hong Kong to clear space for other dubious issues on the Doha agenda. These include European demands for broader protection of geographic indications relating to specialty farm products and increasing pressure from Brazil and India to dilute biotechnology patents.

With all this in mind, it's clear that an early resolution of the access to medicines issue in the weeks leading to the Hong Kong Ministerial could cause much more long-term damage to commercial interests in the U.S. and elsewhere than the headline-grabbing agriculture talks.


Ms. Finston is a research associate with the Institute for Policy Innovation.

(Published November 16, 2005)

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